25.10.14

24.10.14

When you find something easy, that’s a talent, but when you find something difficult, that’s when you get to really work and push and challenge yourself. I’m not saying that [that artist’s] image is invalid, because that might be where she gets her power from. Everyone is different. But for me, there’s something about learning that makes me feel the most adult I’ve ever felt.

23.10.14

In my last year or so of secondary school, when I was about 16, Beyoncé came out with “Crazy in love”, and Christina Milian came out with “AM to PM.” Before that, it was about Britney, Avril Lavigne, Christina Aguilera — all these really cute white girls who defined what the boys were fancying. Then that year, there was this boom of all these light-skinned black stars, and all of a sudden I was the shit. I was hanging out with the popular girls; I’d gone from people literally scribbling out my face in school photos and writing ugly next to it, to, two years later, having everything be fine — all of a sudden I was really cute. At the time I was super androgynous — I had short hair and I dressed like a boy — and suddenly it was cool to dress the way I did, and I was the most desirable thing on earth. I always called bullshit on that!

I think there’s this perception that if you’re a studio geek — if you know loads about production, or you know loads about cameras and can direct all your stuff, or if you’re a songwriter who knows loads about lyrics and stuff — then you can’t get your nails done and you can’t get your hair done and you can’t, like, dress like this. And I just realized that that wasn’t true. So when I started making music and videos, it was on my own terms. I’m 26, and that’s not old for what I’m doing, but it’s not young either — there has been this whole idea for a few years that to be a female artist you have to be like 21, but I don’t really feel like that. I feel like I know exactly what I want, and no one can tell me to do anything I don’t want to do or pose in a way I don’t like or make a song or write something I don’t want to. I guess I got to the point where it’s all me, and only I am to blame, and that feels really great. And if something goes wrong, I am to blame as well — it was my stupid decision, you know what I mean? It feels great! To know that everything is of yourself.